In business, great ideas are not anointed. They flop or fly based on feedback from your marketplace.

Sure, you can do a thought experiment. You can sketch an idea out and estimate what the possible outcomes might be.

The thing is, the only way to really know if that idea of yours will fly, is to try it. To put your idea in play.

Yes, do the research. Be sure to do the planning, too. But then you need to get moving. You need to take action and shift your idea from concept to reality.

Taking action requires courage, because once your idea is in play, it has the potential to flop. However, taking action is the only way to give your idea wings. And the best idea in the world can’t fly, without wings.

Depending on where you buy it, there’s a popular liquid that costs around $26,000 a gallon. Unlike water, this liquid isn’t life-preserving. That’s to say you can’t drink it. It isn’t life-giving either, so you can’t water crops with it.

In fact it does just one thing… and LITERALLY NO ONE needs it!

Despite this, it sells very successfully for tens of thousands of dollars a gallon. Have you guessed what it is yet? The liquid I’m referring to here is Chanel No.5 perfume. So, why does a pleasant smelling liquid sell for such a huge price?

People buy stories

Chanel has successfully built a story around their perfume. It’s a story about style, opulence, beauty and sensuality. It’s nothing whatsoever to do with fragrant smelling liquid. It’s all about the feelings associated with the Chanel No.5 story.

For example.

When we buy Chanel No.5 for someone, they know they’re receiving an expensive, classy gift. We’re telling them that we’re the kind of person who gifts Chanel No.5.

When we buy Chanel No.5 for ourselves, we get to connect with the aspirational lifestyle embodied by the Chanel No.5 brand. Beautiful people. Stylish locations. C’est Chic.

People buy the Chanel No.5 story. They have zero need for the product, but the story makes them want it.

Your story

If you’re like the vast majority of small business owners, you won’t have a compelling story to motivate people to want to hire you or buy from you. Sure, you’ll have a list of services. Yes, you’ll offer a number of promises and benefits. And your competitors will be doing exactly the same.

Why should someone buy from you? Make no mistake, your ability to answer that question with a compelling story, could be the difference between making a living and making a fortune.

How many service options or packages do you offer to prospective clients? Many small business owners offer too many options and it’s losing them a fortune.

Here’s why.

The more options you give to a prospective client, the more choice they have.

The more choice they have, the harder it is for them to make a decision.

The harder it is for them to make a decision, the less likely they are to decide.

So they move on. And you lose another sales lead or client enquiry. And another… and another.

Too much choice

In an effort to be as flexible as possible, business owners often create lots of different service packages. Something for everyone. And it seems to make sense.

The thing is, too much choice is bad for business. It creates confusion and when your prospective clients are confused, they won’t commit. So you get far fewer client enquiries or sales leads from your marketing. As one of the oldest sayings in marketing assures us, “a confused mind always says no!”

Take a look at the number of service options or service packages you provide. Also, look at the number of items within each package.

Now ask yourself: Do you really need to offer so much choice?

If not, reduce. Aim for clarity. Make the decision process easier for your prospective clients. When the decision to hire you or buy from you becomes easier, more people will do it!

Think about it… the decision to start a family, to buy a home, to spend a year travelling the world, these decisions are huge. Life-changing, even. And they’re risky, because they come with no guarantee of success.

Commercial success and decision making

The same is true in business. Breakthrough success only comes, after you’ve made breakthrough decisions. And breakthrough decisions are big. Big enough to break through the challenges that are holding your business back.

Every big business decision will always carry an equally big risk. That’s because it’s the size of the risk that determines the size of the decision. This explains why making small decisions is so easy. They carry little or no risk, so they feel safe.

In speaking with business owners, I find that ongoing business problems can always be traced back to a big decision, which is being avoided.

It looks something like this.

They know there’s a persistent or recurring problem in their business.

They also know something needs to be done about it.

The decision to do what’s required (usually to make an investment or make a significant change) feels too risky.

By 9am, I was experiencing a massive surge in traffic. To qualify that, the traffic was so heavy that I initially thought my site was under a DDoS attack.

But it wasn’t.

It was real people, visiting Jim’s Marketing Blog, in massive numbers… from Apple!

It turned out that the folks at Apple had decided to feature that post very prominently, in their Apple News app. So, for the next 24 hours, my work was being seen by wave after wave of people, who had never heard of me before. And it generated a record-breaking number of new client enquiries, for a weekend.

More importantly…

What does this mean for you and your business?

Business owners work hard to attract traffic to their sites. You may be one of them. If you are, how well prepared are you? What would actually happen, if your website or blog was featured in the news or went viral?

Well, if you’re like the vast majority of small business owners, within minutes, your site would become inaccessible! That’s because the typical hosting packages most people use, are not capable of handling the very success, they want their site to achieve.

Most basic hosting would grind to a halt if 100 people, let alone 1000’s of people, tried to use a site simultaneously. And with your site inaccessible, you’d lose all those prospective client enquiries or new readers.

Yes, the investment required for reliable, robust hosting is significantly higher. However, it means when your site hits the jackpot, you’ll be ready to reap the rewards. In short, if you’re serious about building a high traffic website or blog, invest accordingly.

Update: People have asked me what my hosting set up is. I have a dedicated server (Heart Internet), plus an additional service, which provides extra security and a way to deal with traffic surges (Sucuri).